I prefer to believe the opposite – that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.

I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make...

Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not – most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone’s life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and...

She bit her lower lip hard and blinked her eyes. There was such wistfulness and longing in his voice. Oh, she was going to give him back his eyes, or the next best thing, if...

If you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.

Love is wanting to be with someone all the time.It is accepting the other person with all good qualities and bad and not wanting to change any of them. It is wanting to give affection...

One longs and longs to be grown up, doesn’t one?,” she said, “I dreamed of being eighteen and having a Season and meeting handsome gentlemen even apart from Dominic and falling in love with them...

Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It...

Did she ever feel nostalgia for any of her girlhood dreams? But life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on,...

Sometimes even the imagination lets one down.

I do not admire greatness that has no substance.

Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate...

Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.

Creo que todos soñamos. ,Cómo, si no, conseguir a veces que la vida resulte soportable?

Except that love – that mysterious, vast, all-encompassing power – could not possibly be contained in a single word.

It is foolish to regret anything form one’s past.

Always guarding one’s real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquility within a thousand masks.Life itself had become a secret affair.

Ah, but dreams cannot be captured with promises,” he said. “Like water, they elude our grasp. But water is the staff of life. I believe your dream will come true if only because you will...

There is nothing worse, is there,” she said, “than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the...

Sometimes now was enough.Sometimes it was everything.

The bad part is life continues. The good part is that the pain goes away.

Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has...

La vida nos es insoportable a todos a veces —dijo ella—. No creo que haya nadie lo bastante afortunado como para escapar de toda la oscuridad que ofrece.

My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.

And so silence and …darkness hold happiness and joy?” he said softly.”Assuredly,” she said, “provided one listens to the silence and gazes deeply into the darkness. Everything is there. Everything.

Tears never were worth the effort of crying them.

Did people… really kiss like that? She had had NO idea. She had imagined being kissed, and in her imagination she had been swept away by the sheer romance of the meeting of lips. In...

The longing for something beyond yourself, beyond anything you have ever known or dreamed of?

But if one had everything one could ever need or want, what was left to dream of?

Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.No one was shallow....

Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one’s own, of other people’s. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and...

I can be hurt, she said, only by people I respect.

Sólo cuando no esperamos nada ni albergamos ningún sueño podemos mantener el control de nuestra vida. Los sueños a menudo implican a los demás y es imposible tener la certeza de que los demás no...

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

Have you noticed,” she asked him, “how we live much of our lives in the past and most of the rest of it in the future? Have you noticed how often the present moment slips...

And I need you, my love,” he said. “I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to...

Why is it,” she asked, snuggling closer, “that I so often imagine myself running away and running free?

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don’t know where to look for it any longer. And I don’t know if I would recognize it if I found it....

The suffering of a loved one was in many ways worse than one’s one suffering because it left one feeling so very helpless.

Perhaps today was all that mattered. Perhaps today was all anyone could expect. Perhaps tomorrow was always an illusion that never came.

One who has conquered every aspect of his pain except the deepest.

And he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably...

La felicidad es siempre algo pasajero, fugaz. Nunca es un estado permanente para nadie aun que muchos perseveramos en creer la tonta idea de que si ocurriera esto o aquello seríamos felices el resto de...

Why do I want to run from happiness?

There were certain moments upon which the whole of the future course of one’s life might turn. And almost inevitably they popped out at one without any warning at all, leaving one with no time...

Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its...

The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices,...

Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.